The present invention relates to milking chairs and especially to a power operated movable milking chair for milking a plurality of cows without the operator moving from the milking chair.
In the past, the most common milking stools have been small lightweight stools which are of the general height required for a person to sit upon to place him in the general area required for milking a cow. There is also a platform available for an operator to stand upon if the need arises. Each cow is milked individually by hand or the stool may be used while connecting the cow to an automatic milking machine. After each hookup the stool can be picked up and moved to the next location for the next cow. Alternatively, the operator may simply walk to each cow, bend over and stay in a bent or kneeling position while connecting up each milking machine. This has been somewhat improved by some of the milking parlors which load cows onto carousels or other cow-moving devices so that the operator may stand in one general position while hooking up each cow to an automatic milking machine. One such system may be seen in my co-pending patent application, Ser. No. 347,162 for Milking System. This prior system operates handily in conjunction with the present milking chair and allows an operator to be moved rapidly from one cow to the next and to adjust the position of the operator for connecting and disconnecting the milking machine from each cow and allows the operator to connect up one row of cows and then automatically move his operating chair to a different position for connecting up a second row of cows to the milking machines and returning to the first row for disengaging the milking machines in a predetermined sequence so that the operator is continuously kept occupied but does not injure his back by the continuous bending, walking, stooping and standing normally required to hook up a large number of milking machines. It should be observed that the present milking stool is particularly useful with my previously mentioned milking system but may also be adapted for use with other systems such as the commonly used carousel milking parlor, or in herringbone, sawtooth, side opening or walkthrough milking parlors.